Discovering Meditation is the second installment of my series on Productive Waiting.
If meditation sounds snooty or boring or just plain weird, you are not alone. Many people are turned off by the idea and just refuse to give it a try. You may be one of those people. Unfortunately, not engaging in mental exercise also excludes you from the benefits it delivers, like lower stress, a focused mind, and living a more purposed life.
If it makes you feel better about giving it a try, just change how you label it. Some of the terms you can use include focusing your mind, using your imagination, pondering, mindfulness, or practiced reflection. Whatever you name it, these activities yield impressive benefits. My hope is to entice you to read along and seriously consider meditation. Its role in your life will help you to wait more productively and improve the way you experience life.
Recognition is Key
The first step to productive waiting is recognizing when you are in a waiting situation. Recognition is a key behavior when trying to alter your habits. When you catch yourself nervously checking your phone or feeling the effects of stress, you have just recognized an opportunity to create new, productive behaviors.
Once recognized, invoking meditation starts to turn downtime into productive time. Meditation may be framed very narrowly, like in a spiritual context, or in a much broader sense, where it is focused on stability between the mind and body. I want you thinking about meditation in a broad manner. It is more about doing it rather than how it is done. My goal here focuses on picking up tremendous benefits through simply reflecting.
In its simplest terms, meditation involves positioning your mind so you can lean into the challenges and frustrations you face. The answers are there. We just have to devote the time to uncover them. The object of meditation is not about the style or the manner in which it is performed. It’s about being quiet in order to listen to what your inner voice and your body are trying to communicate. In those quiet moments, you will be seeking to:
- Calm the body and mind
- Let your mind conjure options to face your challenges
- Focus on the best option(s) that suits your particular purpose
Meditation = Peace + Quiet for the Mind
We are exposed to information every day and we are not creating the time to process it. Unfortunately, this causes us to miss critical cues. Meditation becomes the time to reflect on what you are missing. Let’s take a look at some examples of people reflecting on their situations and using a focused mind to purposefully lead them forward.
Let’s Go Back to David
I want to first return to David’s story. After being anointed to become king, he humbly returned to the pasture to watch his flock while waiting to become king. This is when we learn about David’s musical talents. He wrote and played songs* with his harp while he watched the sheep and waited.
David used these songs to express his emotions such as admiration, gratitude, beauty, and anguish, among others. He used these expressions to cement several life-long purposes. These included faith in God and humility. He called upon these purposes regularly while readying himself to become an outstanding, servant leader to his followers.
David’s time meditating and reflecting in the field calmed his mind, clarified his options, and focused him on his purpose. This time became the foundation for all that would come next. He consistently focused on loving God, obeying the king, and listening and serving his people. He utilized this time to put everything into perspective. Meditation solidified his faith. He became one with his spirit. He never could have found the courage and faith to take on Goliath, lead warriors into battle, or fight off the advances of King Saul without a strong base.
How Does this Apply to Me?
Meditation, along with documenting those thoughts, provides an opportunity to understand yourself more clearly. Try asking yourself questions like, “What’s important to you right now that requires more focus?” or “What am I ignoring?” Meditation centers your mental approach and creates a path and focus to move forward. David used this focus to center on reaching God’s desires for his life.
Another way of looking at this is by using the Socratic method to Know Thyself. This method entails viewing yourself through the lens of others. When we see ourselves objectively, we better understand our strengths and the opportunities we have to leverage them. We become more open to ideas and focused on capitalizing on them. Being decisive comes more easily. This process is highlighted extremely well in our next example.
A Contemporary Example
JK Rowling, the world-renowned author of the Harry Potter series of books, speaks** about her imagination in a similar manner to Know Thyself. She utilizes her imagination to think about other people. She uses imagination as a tool to seek understanding and to empathize with their situation. Even though she was unable to put herself into their shoes, she would imagine what it would be like.
Rowling knows a lot about waiting. She struggled through early adulthood challenges which forced her to rely on friends and welfare just to survive. Even at this low point, she never lost hope. Her imagination played a critical role in navigating through the wait. Hitting rock bottom crystallized the fact that she already had what was important. Her meditations created a driving focus that was bound and determined on finishing her work of imagination.
Rowling fueled her ambitions by leaning on the mantra of Greek author Plutarch: “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” This sounds exactly like meditation to me. The meditations of our hearts color the world we are trying to create in our own lives. Rowling used these ideas to create stories and characters from her imagination and bring them into our collective conscience.
In a manner similar to David, Rowling calmed her mind, clarified her options, and focused herself on her purpose, namely finishing that novel. Rowling used her imagination and her immense writing talent to overcome her challenges and fight off her frustrations to create a new future for herself. You can do something similar by listening to your mind and creating a
Putting It All Together
As you can see from these examples, meditation while waiting develops an understanding of the role you have been designed to play in our world. Once we gain that understanding, we take the initial steps required to change the reality surrounding us. Without meditation and introspective thinking, we cannot impact our lives in the manner we were created to perform.
There are so many different ways to meditate. You can start by Googling meditation and see all of the different instruments available. I have used various forms of meditation. They all share the same traits:
- Find a time and a quiet, peaceful place on a regular basis to allow our minds to process where we are in life. Whether it be praying in a darkened room, listening to a guided meditation, or watching sheep graze in a pasture, finding downtime is essential.
- Let your mind wander. You may choose to trek back through the day’s events seeking happy moments or you could focus on periods of strife. A different approach is to mentally scan your brain through your nerve endings from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. This simple scan allows you to unite the mental and physical elements.
- Document your meditations. Whatever comes up during your meditations, take note of it. Like David and Rowling, writing cements the ideas into tangible tools you can use.
That’s what you need to start. If you do, I trust that your next period of waiting will become much more productive. Put down your phone and find a quiet and/or peaceful location. Close your eyes and let your mind wander and reflect.
Of course, as you experiment with the techniques, you will likely seek out additional manners of meditation exercises to try. Begin simply. You don’t need anything fancy or complicated at the beginning. The most important part is getting started and developing a structure and routine.
The next installment of the series shares ideas regarding Engaged Learning. To find out more about how learning helps you get the most out of your life, try this article.
Further Reading
*David’s meditation songs are recorded in the Psalms. A sample of his best hits includes Psalms 23, 27, 139, 37, and 51.
**Please do yourself a favor and read the commencement speech JK Rowling delivered to the 2008 Harvard graduating class. I consider it a 5-minute devotional on the power of thought and purpose and how it can improve our lives.